Late, but sweet: Long, cold winter has slowed start of maple sugar season

Tuesday

Mar 11, 2014 at 1:37 PMMar 11, 2014 at 1:37 PM

By Julie Sherwood jsherwood@messengerpostmedia.com

Typically, Valentine’s Day for the Schoff family marks the beginning of the busiest time of year — tapping more than 700 sugar maple trees to turn sap into maple syrup. But this year, like maple-syrup producers statewide, the Schoffs had to wait a few more weeks for Mother Nature to give even a hint of the warmth needed to get the sweet juices flowing.“It’s a slow start,” said Chris Schoff of the Schoff's Sugar Shack at 1064 Willis Hill Road in Victor. But the sap has started to flow, providing enough for their first 40 gallons of syrup that originated in the sugar maples filling the woods on Cline Road. With sugar content at 2.1 percent, a bit above average, it bodes well for a great season, Chris said Monday.With another snowstorm due this week, Schoff and other maple producers are hustling to make the most of the winter reprieve as they gear up for the late and no less labor-intensive season highlighted by the annual Maple Weekends later this month.If temperatures can move into — and stay in — the 30s and 40s, the season could go into April, Schoff said.The four-to-six-week maple sugar season typically begins about mid-February, when a spell of daytime temperatures rise to the low 40s and nighttime lows hover in the 20s. This winter has been so cold that many producers said they still hadn’t been able to get any sap by the first week of March. A few producers in the Finger Lakes region said they got their first run of sap a couple weeks ago when the temperatures rose into the 40s for a couple days.Leslie and Judy Everson run the family business Everson Pure Maple Products at 3121 Bunker Hill Road in Clifton Springs. Leslie said they do the entire process “the old-fashioned way,” without a mechanical vacuum or other modern trappings that can help the process along. “We only use a bucket and natural vacuum,” said Leslie, who on Monday hadn’t yet had enough of a sap run to begin boiling. But he wasn’t discouraged. Like others in the business, he knows it comes on its own sweet time.“I suspect it is going to get better today and tomorrow,” Leslie said, adding, “sometime I get fooled.”Either way, Leslie added, he is optimistic because “late winter can make optimal conditions for maple syrup.”New York maple producers rank second nationwide in comparing output by state, and all told, produced more than half a million gallons (574,000 gallons) of syrup in 2013. Last year, New York’s maple producers used 2.2 million taps, the largest number of taps since 1949 according to the governor’s office.“Maple is big business here in New York,” stated Acting State Agriculture Commissioner Richard Ball in a release promoting the annual Maple Weekend, which a few years ago expanded to cover two weekends. The last two weekends in March feature hundreds of maple producers statewide opening their operations to the public. Pancake breakfasts, tours of maple forests with tapped trees, hands-on demonstrations of sap being collected and boiled into syrup, and tastings and sales of maple products will take place in the Finger Lakes region and beyond.On Friday, Garry Wohlschlegel, co-owner of Wohlschlegel’s Naples Maple Farm at 8064 Coates Road in Naples, said he had one good run and was looking forward to more. “We capitalized on the warm spell,” he said. Like his colleagues, Wohlschlegel is keeping an eye on the sugar content that affects output. Typically, it takes about 43 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup, with the typical 2 percent sugar content. Drop down to 1 percent sugar content, and it takes 86 gallons of sap for one gallon of syrup. Sugar content, sap flow, length of season — it’s all ruled by Mother Nature, Wohlschlegel said.Dick Day, another veteran maple syrup producer, of Day Brothers Dairy and Maple Farm at 2292 County Road 6 in Phelps, said no two seasons are ever the same. Last season yielded “a bounty” of syrup, said Day. “We had a good run of it. ... It was a bumper crop,” he said. It’s too soon to tell what this year will bring, he said, but as in the more than 40 years he’s logged in the business, Day is up for the challenge.“The season is just getting started a little bit late this year,” he said.

If you goWHAT Maple weekendsWHEN March 22 to 23 and March 29 to 30; 10 a.m. to 4 p.m each dayWHERE List of participating farms is at http://nysmaple.com/DETAILS Producers statewide welcome families to their farms to experience firsthand how maple syrup and related products are made. Farms offer various family-friendly activities that include tastings, pancake breakfasts and sale of maple products. Check with individual farms for details.